Monday, April 18, 2011

Lenertz Genealogy in Beaufort, Luxembourg

I actually had this information in my files for a while, but I forgot that I had it. This is why you always go back and review your records, folks.

Credit is given to Larry of the Hesch History blog, half of a pair of authors who are the only other people I know actively researching genealogy in Luxembourg. Several months ago, Larry sent me Alexander's birth record.

I was so touched and thankful because the Luxembourg records set at FamilySearch that includes this image are "browse only" meaning that users have to go through each page without an index. There are almost 500,000 records and several hundred municipalities/towns:

Larry saved me a ton of time searching each and every town on this list, and for that I am grateful. Now that I know Beaufort is my go-to town, I can scan those images for other Lenertz folks. Perhaps Alex had siblings.

Also on my to-do list is a translation of this record:

Good luck with that.

So special thanks to Larry. And to new-found cousin Kathryn, whose email caused me to go back in my Lenertz files. These are your people, too.

[Note: See that title I chose for this blog post? It's intentionally boring. I could have written something catchy to get more hits, but my intent is to reach out to others who are searching for this particular subject. I am playing for the search engines this time, hoping that somewhere down the road a cousin will type the right word combo and land on my blog. Do you put that much thought into your posts? Maybe you should. --Amy]

6 comments:

Boring or catchy...for you. Jealous...for me. I don't think my people have been anywhere but the South. We've just always been here. I can't find a connection outside of the South. We just didn't exist elsewhere.

I have to admit - I don't put that much thought into my posts! So here is my question - do words in the title "count" for more in terms of what the search engine will find? Or, to put it another way, if you had used a catchy title and then the words "Lenertz" & "Genealogy" & "Beaufort, Luxembourg" were within your post, would those cousins be less likely to find your blog?

I always like your posts about fun with search terms - I just have to admit that I don't know exactly how it all works in getting those cousins to "find" me.

Diana, I don't know if keywords are weighed differently in blog titles instead of posts. The reason I made the boring title with good keywords was because I wanted those to stand out.

If someone is poking around the internet and they put LENERTZ BEAUFORT in Google, I want my blog post title to jump out at them so they click through to me. If the keywords are buried in the post, they might not click. Does that make sense?

Thanks Amy - It does make sense but I hadn't thought about it. It's true when I search that I tend to click on links that appear to be what I am looking for based on what I see rather than clicking on everything just to see why the search engine found it!!